Rise of the guardians - Sweet lies
by Judithhhi
Summary: "If I told you that I've never gotten a penny from my tooth, never found a colorful egg on the Easter, never seen any beautiful dreams, never had a snowball fight or I have never, ever been given a Christmas present... would you believe me?" Could it be, that there is someone who has been completely forgotten, abandoned by The Guardians? Someone found her, and not accidentally...
1. Chapter 1 - Hope

**Hello you, who decided to read my fanfic Rise of the guardians - Sweet lies. Yes, yes, you probably know the name already since you even clicked it once, but I just wanted to make sure that you were serious and really wanted to read this piece of... work. This is my first fanfic EVER and I hope that you will enjoy it. Please note that English isn´t my first language, so my good friend Google-translate helped me time to time. **

**I know that the movie is already quite "old" but fortunately for me you are here anyways. So thank you, mate! **

**Without a further ado, let us begin. ;)**

They always said that there was something bigger in this world. Something that we couldn´t quite understand, no matter how much we teased our little brains by it. Something that seemed friendly and familiar, loving and caring... But when the years passed and the time started to make its marks in our mortal bodies, we forgot. We just simply forgot. But what we didn´t remember anymore...? They didn´t know.

"But it was important and magnificent, for sure" , my grandparents always told me.

And, "They have gone crazy Lilith, don´t listen to them… " my mother said every time they did so.

Well, that didn´t keep her from putting me in their care every once in a while, but now I understand why.

Those silly old farts would not had hurt me... not like my father… my disgusting, cruel, unstable father.

The man who loitered around our home, cursing his fate and drowning his sorrow down by the bottle over and over again. Jobless, hopeless, full of anger against the world. The house maybe had his stink on it, the bottle listened his woes, but we _always_ got his anger. It was an endless circle of shouting, beating, screaming and crying…

I know now, what was that miraculous thing that my insane grandparents were talking about… _he_ told me. But where were The guardians then? When I cried in the corner of my room holding my ripped teddy as my parents shouted to each other? When I waited for Santa outside, shivering from cold god knows how many times? When I had to go to the infirmary with mom to get stitches for her bleeding head? When I tried to find even one, just one easter egg from our vacant, gravelly courtyard? When my first tooth fell out? When I wanted to build a snowman or have a snowball fight with someone, anyone? When all those horrible nightmares, every night, every single night, started to haunt my dreams? Those dreams that were supposed to be the only place where I could escape this reality! Where were you?! The guardians of the children, those who protect us from the cruelty of the world, _where were you?!_

"They weren´t there...", a voice whispered in my ear like a cold breeze of wind.

I flinched and somewhere back in my consciousness I realised two tears falling down by my cheeks.

"Hush, little one… don´t cry… " someone said as the shadows hugged me, slowly tightening their grip.

"You won´t need them… I´ll be here for you.", I heard the voice say.

It sounded as deep as the dark ocean and I almost could feel the cold water gather inside me… filling me with its icy waves all the way down by my spine…

But behind it all, I could hear a small, just a really tiny drop of kindness…

a little light in the darkness that promised everything would be okay… that there was hope for me after all… that someone would make those horrible nightmares go away… And it was enough.

It was already more than anyone had ever given to me, so I gave in.

I let the voice tell me its sweet lies. Those beautiful things that could never be true…

...Or could they?

How can I know that he´s lying? Why couldn´t he be telling the truth? He already gave me more than Santa, or any other guardian ever gave me…

_he_ gave me hope. Now, the least that I could do for him was to listen.

_Listen and believe, that he is right._

**Yo! This wasn´t very long, I know, I know... but this was the first chapter so I let it be what ever it wanted to be. And hey, It wanted to be short.**

**I don´t know if you should expect longer chapters in the future, but whatever my imagination makes up will come here as soon as I can put it on the "paper". Now is that time when I apologise from all the possible mistakes that I may have made (hopefully I didn´t disgrace the beautiful language of English very badly) and I thank you from reading this chapter of Rise of the-, okay whatever you know the name already... **

**Please be so kind to comment, favourite or follow this little story... or me... I quess... **

**I´m new in here okay. Oh well, whatever you do: Thank you for reading! :3  
**


	2. Chapter 2 - Awakening

**Ehmegerd! Someone actually read the first chapter! I´m literally screaming from joy in here! Thank you so much from the comments. Even if there was just a few of them, they mean the world to me! Oh, and btw: Is there a way to respond to them..? Or should I just write my answers in here? Well, since you´ve been such a good little kiddos, here´s the next chapter for you. Enjoy. ;)**

I don´t know how much time I spent in my restless sleep, but when I opened my eyes all I could see was a small empty room around me. I was laying on an old wooden bed and it squeaked loudly, when I got up into a sitting position. The walls of the room were dark gray and they almost looked like they were slowly moving towards me, but a narrow window behind my bed let the moonlight make a long white square on the floor, proving that I was only imagining things...

Here and there on those walls I could see little cracks that were telling their own little stories about this place. Mostly just how lonely it had been over these long passing years…

This room had a really disturbing feeling on it, but I couldn´t quite tell why.

It felt like every time I looked somewhere, on the edge of my vision something quickly slipped away from my gaze, and when I tried to catch even a small peak of it, somehow it always escaped somewhere I couldn´t see. I didn´t find it scary. No, actually I wasn´t scared at all…

I was just... annoyed.

Suddenly I heard a soft, quiet laughter from the other side of the room.

"Oh, Forgive my shadows, those playful little rascals... They mean no harm. I actually think they´ve come into liking you over these past days...", I heard a familiar voice say with an amused tone.

I gasped from surprise. It was the voice from my dream.

That dream where he told me about The guardians, about the whole different world that I couldn´t see before.

He told me about the Tooth fairy, who had her little helpers to aid her in collecting the teeth from the children of the world. He told me about the Easter bunny, who could make huge holes and tunnels appear in the ground just by tapping his foot on it. He told me about the Santa, who made wonderful toys for every children in the world with his yetis and little elves. He told me about the Sandman, who gave children their beautiful dreams. And he told me about Jack Frost, the wildest and youngest of the guardians, who could freeze the trees, rivers and lakes with just one single touch of his wand.

The voice let me know everything I wanted to know about The Guardians. And there wasn´t anything I wouldn´t want to know about them. _They_ were the people who had ignored, abandoned and forgotten all about me for all my life time.

And I wanted to know what kind of people would have done something like that.

If they helped and cared for every other children in the world, why was I left all by myself?

_He_ didn´t have an answer to that.

But he made me a promise, a promise that he would never leave me alone…

It was somehow strange that this time I couldn´t only hear him, but also see the owner of the voice.

And when he stepped out from the shadows it wasn´t anything I was expecting at all.

Before me stood a tall slender man, who had a pale slightly grayish skin.

His glossy black hair was styled to come out as slick spikes from the back of his head and he wore a long black robe.

His appearance was proud and serene and it almost looked like he was partly one with the shadows behind him. But the most unbelievable of his features was his eyes. They were silvery-gold and I could see them clearly even in the sultry darkness of the room. Two little flames in the dark, I thought. At the same time I was fascinated by his eyes, my body was screaming at me:

_Run, hide, you must get away from him!, _it shouted voice full of fear. But still, my legs didn´t move.

They didn´t make even a single effort to run. It didn´t even cross my mind to hide from him. Why should I? That sounded like the dumbest idea I had ever heard. So instead of running or hiding I smiled at him. For a flashing second he looked a bit surprised but then he responded to my smile.

"Hmm… Impressive, even if I say so myself." he murmured.

"Well then, good morning, sunshine. Or should I say evening…? You were asleep for a while.", he said almost cheerfully.

Now was my turn to look suprised. "How long..."

"...time did you sleep?, he ended my sentence. "Oh, just about two months. It was actually much less than I expected.", he said.

I stared at him, my eyes wide open. Two months?! TWO-WHOLE-MONTHS?!

I looked at my hands. They were very pale and skinny just like they had always been. Only now the moonlight made them look almost purely white. They were like two empty scraps of paper, waiting for words to fill them. I grabbed the blanket on my feet and tossed it aside. Now I realised that I was wearing a white old fashioned pyjama. It had little ruffles on the front and the top resembled more of a dress than a shirt. But I looked normal. Not like those people who had just awakened from a coma looking sickly and thin.

My hand let the blanket drop on the floor.

Without I even realised, I was shaking.

"What am I..?", I whispered.

I don´t know if I was scared, or terrified. The feeling I had at that moment couldn´t be described.

I saw from the corner of my eye, that the man´s smile had gotten even wider when he responded:

"Darling, _You´re a Guardian."  
_

**Dun dun duun! A cliffhanger! Yay! I know that this wasn´t a completely new idea, but just wait and see. Hohoho... **

**Again, thank you for reading the second chapter of I-know-that-you-know-the-name-already! See you in the next chapter! Ps. You wouldn´t believe me if I told you how tempted I was to name this chapter ****_"Surprise Muthafu*ka!"... =.=_**


	3. Chapter 3 - Name

**Hi there again! I got some helpful tips from you guys when I asked about that commenting thingylingy. If I learn how to send private messages, maybe... just maybe... some beautiful day you shall have your answers. No, really, I´ll answer to them as soon as I can. Damn! I´m actually just so happy to get them that I need few days to cool it down and think about the answers! And as for you DarkHorseBlueSky, please don´t be afraid of the possible similarities in our stories. I haven´t read yours yet, which I might do after I finish my own. I don´t intend to make this a very long journy, but maybe I get so excited that there will still be chapters coming even in 2030... Right now I just write from my heart and only the time will tell what kind of a story this will be, and even I don´t know that yet... ( should I? D:). **

**Oh my... This writer´s commentary is already becoming way too long. Ugh... l´ll just shut up for now and let you read the next chapter. **

**And as always: Enjoy! ;)**

"_A Guardian?_!", I spit the word like it would have tasted bad in my mouth.

The man looked at me and it seemed like he was happy about my reaction. He laughed.

"Yes you´re a guardian. But don´t worry, you´re not like _them. _You´re one of _my Guardians_. Actually you are the first one of them...", he said, still smiling at me.

I stared at him, confused. "I… don´t understand… Why would you need more Guardians? Is there not enough of them already..?"

The man lifted his brows. "Clearly not… And that´s quite a strange question, since it´s coming from a girl who would think to know that even better than the rest of us... ", he said sadly.

I looked away from him and let my hair hide my pained expression.

_True. _There was five guardians, but still they hadn´t found me. No matter how much I believed in them...

"But why did you choose me?, I asked. "I´m sure there would have been many much stronger and... more preferable children to be your new Guardians... ", I said quietly as I looked at my feet. Why would he need a puny girl like me to stand beside him? The world is full of children, he could have just picked one.

I didn´t hear when he moved, but suddenly I felt that he was sitting beside me on the bed. His hand touched gently my chin and he carefully turned my face towards him, so he could speak to me eye to eye.

"I chose you because you were perfect. You were a lot like me… You were left alone in the dark without a real family, pushed aside when no longer needed… almost forgotten by everyone. And since you knew how it felt like, I couldn´t think any other child to be somehow better than you.", he said softly. I looked at his golden eyes and tried to fight back my tears.

So _he_ knew how it felt like too. He wasn´t just another adult who "tried to help me" or who "knew what I was going through"... They didn´t have any idea what they were talking about. But when I looked at those eyes, those old, eternal eyes, I could see all the hidden sadness, suffering, loneliness and even anger right through them. They were like two windows that opened a view into a cold, dark desert. A place that you just somehow knew nothing could ever bloom… nothing would ever grow in there and hide the dry white sand.

Then the man patted my head and smiled at me like before.

"And why on earth would you need to be strong? Bears are strong, lions are strong, but they aren´t even far as intelligent as owls, as sly as foxes or as quiet as cats. I have no use for some muscular idiots,

which you, my girl, are not. ", he said, clearly trying to cheer me up.

Somehow I was able to smile for his comment and I actually felt a little bit better.

Then he rose up from the bed and clapped his hands twice.

"Okay enough of useless moping! It´s time to get to work!"

First it seemed like a few of the shadows gathered before him and just danced in the air, but then they quickly started to take a more specific shape. And after a short while, he was holding one pair of black shorts and a top on his hands. Lastly he waved his hand in the air one more time and he took something from the darkness. It was a long gray hood. He threw the clothes on the bed before me and nodded approvingly.

"Here, you can dress in these. And don´t worry, they won´t disappear like shadows normally intend to do. I´ve commanded them to keep that form from now on, so in principle they aren´t even living things anymore, they just may help you blend into the shadows. ", he said.

I took the clothes into my hands one at the time and tried what the fabric was like. The jeans and top felt normal... just like an ordinary shorts or top would feel like.

But when I touched the dark gray hood, it felt like I was sliding my hand over a soft fur of a cat.

Although the material looked like a normal cloth.

"I didn´t know that the shadows were living things...", I said being a little bit surprised and still moving my hand on the hood.

The man just shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, maybe they are not really living things to _you,_ but since I can command and shape them, or even move freely amongst them, they surely feel like that to me."

"And how can you do something like that? Command the shadows? ...Are you a Guardian too? ", I asked.

Even though I highly doubted it.

The man looked at me like I had just insulted him somehow, and I felt immediately sorry for asking something like that.

"Oh god, no. I´m not a Guardian. I´m definitely not one of those little lackeys of the Man In The Moon..." he said coldly.

But I didn´t give up, "Well, If you´re not a Guardian… and you still have those amazing powers… What are you?

No, actually… the right question would be: _Who_ are you?" I dared to ask.

My question earned just a little dry smile from him.

"I am Pitch Black, the man that you should think as your guide and mentor for now on. It is simple as that.", he said, putting an end to our conversation.

But that wasn´t simple at all, I thought. Plus, It didn´t really even answer to my question.

I was going to ask him to explain it more clearly, but he didn´t give me a chance to do that.

"I´ll be waiting for you in the corridor, come there as soon as you are ready." he simply said without even looking at me, vanishing then into the shadows.

I sighed. I was so confused about all this new information that I suddenly had a strange urge to put my head on the pillow and just fall asleep. Maybe I would find myself from my bed at home and this all would have been just another strange dream…

Or a nightmare, like they usually had been. But when I thought about waking up in our home, in my normal everyday life, I immediately pushed aside the idea of sleeping. Whatever I was at, it was much, much better than my life there. So I got up from the bed and started to change my clothes.

"Pitch Black...", I whispered in the empty dark room. _What a strange name indeed…_

**So there you have it. The 3th chapter of my story. Hopefully it was to yer liking! Arrr... **

**Okay, now I don´t know what I´m doing in here anymore... Jesus.  
**

**But anyhow, your comments, faves and follows are still appreciated like the old gods used to be back in the glorious days of Greek and Rome. **

**So again, Thank you for reading! ^^**


	4. Chapter 4 - Shoes

**Hi! I don´t have anything amazingly important to say here this time. Maybe just that I hope you won´t mind the slow progress of this story... :3 **

**I´ve actually read some stories where the main character would probably had met his one true love already, been in a war, gotten his family killed and he would be swearing his revenge by now, buuut I don´t think we have to rush anywhere. Just take a cup of tea or coffee beside you, **_**relax**_** and enjoy this next chapter. **

When I had dressed in the clothes Pitch gave me, I noticed a little, teeny tiny problem.

He didn´t have given me shoes. It wasn´t the most horrible mistake in the world, since the hood was very warm, but the dark stony floor felt unpleasantly cold under my bare feet.

It didn´t prevent me from walking to the old brassy colored door.

I had gotten it much worse before...

I put my hand on the doorknob and turned my head to take the one last look of the room, before I would leave. I said my silent goodbyes and opened the door. Then I stepped into the hallway, leaving the room alone again to wait and hope that someone would enter it once more in the future…

Even though Pitch had promised that he would be waiting for me in the corridor, I couldn´t see him anywhere. I looked for him from the both ends of the long narrow hallway, but I didn´t find him.

I was just about to turn back and see if he was in the room that I had just left, when I felt someone grabbing on my shoulder behind. I shrieked from surprise and I almost hit him in the face, but Pitch was still stronger than me. He prevented easily my pathetic attack and his laugh echoed loudly from the walls.

"I´m sorry, I just couldn´t help myself...", Pitch said still laughing when he released my hand.

My face had turned red from anger and embarrassment and I crossed my hands on my chest.

He noticed it and tried to soothe my irritation.

"Ah, Don´t be mad. It seems like you´re just one of those people who attack when they are under a threat. It´s not a bad thing, not at all. You should just strengthen your skills a bit before trying to hit someone´s nose in their brains... ", he said and pinched my cheek, like I would have been a cute little hamster that had just tried to bite his finger.

I gave him a gloomy stare and rubbed my cheek.

"Do that again, and I swear that I´ll find the way to get that nose in the back of your head... ", I muttered.

He just laughed, clearly not taking my threat seriously… not like I was even expecting that he would.

"It seems like I´m finally starting to figure out your personality, Lilith." he said and grinned slyly.

Then he turned around and started to walk towards the door that was in the end of the hallway.

I didn´t ask how he knew my name. Was there really anything that he _didn´t _know about me...

I sighed deeply and let go of my slight anger and embarrassment along with the air that escaped from my lungs. Well, at least he didn´t seem to be as deadly serious as before, when he left the room, I thought and followed him outside.

When we arrived into the spacious yard of the building, only the cold wind and snowy forest were there to greet us. It was night time and I could see the full moon lay its pale light over the mountains far, far away. My feet felt numb in the snow and I shivered from cold even though the hood made its best efforts to keep me warm.

"Are you feeling cold?", Pitch asked from me when he looked at my bare feet.

"Just a little...", I said and tried to get the hold of my clattering teeth.

My answer made him raise his brows, "Oh well, If you are _just a little _cold, we can surely keep on going…", he said and started to move towards the dark frosty forest.

I didn´t move even a one inch from where I was standing. Now I didn´t just shiver from the cold but also from anger. It seemed like I hadn´t gotten rid of it after all. Was it even possible for someone to change from an understanding, wise adult, into an unbelievably annoying sadist, just in a matter of minutes?!

I grinded my teeth and tried my best not to yell something shameless and vulgar to him.

"Okay, Now that you mentioned it, _I am_ actually feeling quite cold!", I shouted instead.

He turned towards me and acted like he would have been somehow really surprised by my words.

"Oh my, Why didn´t you just say it sooner? "

I stayed persistently silent when he walked beside of a little spruce that cast a short shadow behind it.

Pitch whispered few words to the darkness and just like before, he got something in his hands when he pulled them away from the shadows. This time they were holding a pair of dark brown leather boots.

He left them on the snow and waited for me when I stumbled to pick them up and put them on my feet. They were so warm and soft from inside that when I took a couple steps forward on the snow, it felt like I was walking on a big fluffy cloud. And I almost couldn´t hear my footsteps at all. It was kind of scary...

"See? It wasn´t that hard.", he said and smiled subtly. "And since I´m you mentor now, maybe you should think this as a lesson.

So, Lesson one: You should always be honest with me."

"Point taken." I answered and rolled my eyes. Pitch nodded but he didn´t seem to be happy yet.

Suddenly he snapped his fingers and I gasped. I could feel something move on my skin.

When the movement stopped I lifted my hood´s long cape to look under it. My clothes had changed from the shorts and top into a long black tunica and thick dark leggings. I felt much warmer than just a moment ago.

"Why didn´t you just give me this kind of clothes right in the beginning?", I asked nervously.

The way he had just changed my clothes by only snapping his fingers didn´t really help me to forget that I was literally wearing only shadows… I couldn´t but hope that I wouldn´t end up like The Emperor in his sadly famous fairytale.

Pitch looked at me for a moment, like he would´ve been deeply wondering about something, but then he turned away from me just like before.

"Not for any particular reason.", he said. "I don´t really feel cold, so I was wondering if you would... And now we know that you can. ", he said with a monotonic tone.

"I´m not a fashion designer, so you should get used to those clothes. They don´t wear out very easily.", he added.

He didn´t look at me anymore. I stared at his back and how it was slowly becoming smaller as he walked away from me, closer to the forest.

Did I just imagine things or… had Pitch just sounded a bit disappointed..?

Suddenly my anger towards him drained away completely, leaving just all the doubts on the bottom of my mind.

Did I do something wrong? Was my weakness irritating him? Had I said something stupid?

Or had he actually tested me somehow?

I shook my head and tried to put my doubtful thoughts aside. He wouldn´t leave me alone, I reminded myself.

I could take everything but that...

I promised myself, that I would show him. I would show him that I could be useful.

_I didn´t wan´t him to be disappointed in me._

**Hmm... this chapter seemed to had quite much to do with clothes. I don´t believe that it´s necessarily a bad thing... I actually think that it´s very important what the characters are wearing. **

**Still, this wasn´t just some kind of:"I want to dress her in new outfits like a barbie in every other chapter, loool! #swag #yolo #omg", idea! Aaaw Hades Naah! There was a real idea behind this... you must believe me... *sniff* **

**...Ehm, Excuse me and my strange behaviour. Thank you for reading, I hope to see you in the chapter too! ;)**


	5. Writers words - The Guardian of Advice

**Hi. I´ve had doubts. I think that every "writer" has them at some point, but I was just surprised how soon I got mine. After the amazing rush at the beginning, that kept me going for some days like caffeine, had worn out, I soon felt myself tired and stressed. It was stupid and I knew it, but after throwing my imagination, heart and (at some points) poor english on a paper, into a mess that I was so proud of, I started wondering: **

**Are _they_ proud of it too? **

**What if _they_ don´t like this story anymore? What if this chapter was written badly? Will _they _stop reading my story because of it? **

**It was strange to see how something that I were so excited about before, made me suddenly roll in my bed at night, sleepless. To think, what I could do better so _they_ wouldn´t leave me and my story here. Oh, how afraid I was that nobody would care about it anymore...**

**But yesterday a little boy from our neighbourhood came to our house. He comes here often, just to watch some TV with me or to draw something when his parents are at work. I didn´t know why he came here all the time, even when I didn´t pay almost any attention to him and even though I sometimes said something too harshly to him. **

**He was (and is) one of those annoying little kids, who just can´t stop asking: Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?**

**And when he drove to our yard with his bike yesterday, I immediately sighed from irritation. _Great, now I would have to enterntain him while he´s here,_ I thought.**

**He came in and sat on one of our big brown armchairs in the livingroom, and like he always did, he started our conversation with a question: "What are you drawing?", he asked and stared at the big notebook I got on my lap.  
"Nothing...", I said and keeped drawing, trying to push him out of my head. I was just finishing the girl´s long cape and trying to add more shadows in the picture.  
**

**"Who is she?", he asked a question, again. **

**"She is no-one... she is just... Lilith...", I answered, trying not to sound too irritated.**

**"Who´s Lilith?", he asked and this time he sounded actually quite interested. It was funny because sometimes he just asked... I don´t know... just to ask...  
**

**And suddenly I wanted to tell someone, anyone about how I felt. How tired I was and why. The reason I went to sleep so late and woke up when everyone had already done so many things that day. And so I did. **

**I told him everything I had on my mind. And he listened. **

**For the first time he didn´t interrupt me all the time with new stupid questions. He just sat still and listened, and when I was done, he didn´t say anything. I waited eagerly what he would say. **

**"How stupid.", he blurted out and my hopes to get an itelligent answer from him dropped immediately. I almost regretted that I told anything to him.  
**

**But then he continued: **

**"Well, if you just use all your time worrying about if _they_´ll read your story or not, they will never get a new chapter. And then they´ll stop reading eventually, right? You should just write what _you_ think is good and maybe _they_ will like it too... "  
**

**Some time after that, his mother called him and told him to come home.**

** Before he left, I finally asked why he came to our house so often. He shrugged his shoulders and said that he just didn´t really have anyone to play with. Then he left.**

**But when I got back inside, I felt so much lighter. Like that boy would have just taken half of my worries with him and buried them on the ground where I couldn´t see them anymore. **

**So I went to my computer and started writing. It wasn´t magically easier than before and it took time, lots of time, but when the new chapter was ready... I realised that _I was proud of it_. **

**It surely was full of mistakes, the same words were used at least thousand times and I wasn´t sure if the new words really meant what I tried to say... _but I was proud of it. _**

**_So today, I wanted to share my feelings with you, so maybe the other half of anxiety in me would drain away..._  
**

_**And as always, I thank you for reading.**  
_


	6. Chapter 6 - The boy in the sky

**Yo! The last chapter didn´t have much to do with the actual story, I apologise about that. I won´t write that kind of chapters in the future, maybe only a small epilogue (if this fanfic ever ends)... **

**I´ll write these Writer´s commentaries a bit less in the future, they just simply eat more of my time when I just want to share the new chapter with ya. I wanted to tell you this so you wouldn´t need to wonder why my comments here disappeared like a fart in Sahara. **

**Damn... when did I become this mature...? =.=**

**Oh well, just enjoy this new chapter... ;)**

We walked through the forest in silence. Neither of us said anything or tried to start a conversation, because we both knew that it would have shattered the beautiful atmosphere of the forest. The trees were glittering from the frost like someone would have attached thousands or millions of fair small diamonds on them and the crystal white snow was completely untouched before our path.

So we moved like two quiet shadows in the night, where only the moon could see us.

_Was there really someone in there? A man in the moon?, _I wondered.

He was so high above, that he probably could see the whole world from there…

Did he feel like a king, watching his humble little servants below him?  
Had he builded a huge pretentious castle for himself and did he sit on a big silvery throne?

Did he carry a skillfully made crown, full of jewels on his head?

And then my mind formed a one sad thought.

What if he had a castle but all the rooms were empty? He had a throne but no-one ever visited him? He might have been the king of the moon, but what could he do with just a useless title...

Maybe that´s why he formed the Guardians... maybe it was his loneliness that made him care about the children of the world. Funny what just a one simple feeling could create.

I noticed that in front of me, Pitch had stopped walking. It looked like he was carefully listening at something. I stopped too and followed his example. First I didn´t really notice anything…

I couldn´t separate the silent sounds of the forest that were singing in my ears. All I could hear was a distant rustle of the leaves, when the wind caressed the tops of the trees somewhere nearby.

I closed my eyes.

I still heard that the wind was coming closer and closer, it was a voice that belonged here…

but then I realised that it was too strong, way too loud. I quickly opened my eyes and turned them to Pitch.

His eyes were now wide open and they were locked on mine.

"Hide!", he hissed between his teeth and he grabbed my arm.

He pushed me behind one of the trees and I fell in the snow. For a moment everything was just a snowy blur in my vision, but when it settled, I could feel the wind blowing on my face. It pushed the hood from my head and my long dark hair waved wildly in the air when a cold gust of wind blew over me.

I was going to hide my head under my hands and wait for the wind to pass…

but then I heard light laughter from the sky.

It was a boy´s voice, and it sounded a little bit gruff, like he would have cried from joy so many times that in the end it had affected in his voice permanently.

And before I even knew it, I was standing on the snow and watching if I could see a silhouette moving in the sky.

And there he was.

A young boy, probably only my age, swinging in the air and laughing. He made few round flips in the air and it looked like he was playing with the wind. He didn´t have tamed it and he didn´t own it, of course he did not… the wind was just his friend.

I gasped when he suddenly stopped in the middle of his spin and started to fall.

I almost ran off from my hiding place, even though it would have been useless, to catch the boy. But someone pulled me back.

It was Pitch who was also hiding in the dark. He touched his lips with his finger and beckoned me to look at the sky again.

I did so, and I saw that the wind had caught the boy in the middle of his fall. He was completely fine.

"Is he crazy or something?!", I whispered to Pitch who answered me with a faint smile.

The boy´s laughter echoed over the forest once again and then, just as fast as he had appeared, he was gone. I was first to get out from the shadows and Pitch soon followed me.  
I tried to see where the boy had went, but it was impossible. He was long gone.

"The Guardians are just like that. They storm in everywhere like the world was made just for them and their little rules..." Pitch said, looking at the snow. The wind had ruined its perfectly smooth surface and it didn´t shine anymore as beautifully as it had before.

"He seemed to be just a boy, he can´t be much older than me… and _he_´s a Guardian?", I said.

Pitch smiled, "Yes, he is. But I think that he´s a bit too old for you, darling. _The boy, _you just saw was Jack Frost.", he answered, confirming my thoughts.

I stood still and bit my lip so I wouldn´t have screamed from frustration.

I wasn´t surprised about the fact that the boy was Jack. He had seemed free and wild, his hair had been silvery white, he had a long wooden wand and he was a Guardian. Even I wasn´t so stupid that I couldn´t put the pieces together and figure it out.

But how ironic it was, that just some time ago when I actually wanted to see him, he hadn´t showed up, but now when I had started to hate the Guardians, those "protectors" of the children, he had just flown in here, right before my nose. Pitch looked at my reaction but he didn´t seem to mind it.

"Are you okay?", he just asked when I started to march angrily in the snow.

"I´m fine! I´m feeling absolutely great! ", I retorted. "How nice of that little bastard to finally show his face in here! Too bad that he didn´t have time to see me for the last, oh, I´m not sure, _15 years was it?!_"

My voice had raised at the end into a loud screaming and I was so angry that I just wanted to break something. If I only could I would have hacked the whole forest into tiny sticks or burned it down just to show how furious I was.

I couldn´t take it anymore. I shouted as hard as I could and hit blindly the nearest tree around.

I didn´t even stop to think how stupid it was or how much my hand would hurt after it. My anger muffled all my sane thoughts that were trying to tell me how bad and dumb idea it was to try to hurt that thick old oak standing before me. And to my own surprise I heard a loud smash from the tree.

But my hand didn´t hurt at all… Actually, it hadn´t even touched the tree.

Instead, I saw that the wind had come back… and it was now moving around me.

**What happens next? **

**Read the next chapter and you shall know... :)**

**Thanks for reading!**


	7. Chapter 7 - Nightmare

**Here´s a new chapter for ya... Enjoy! ;)  
**

I looked at the oak´s strong, rugged trunk without really realising what just had happened.

Somehow there was now a wide rough-edged dent on the tree.

There´s no way I could have done that. It was impossible.

Knowing my strength, I couldn´t have even made the tree shake, no matter how hard I would have hit it.

And… even if I would have done it, my fist should be bleeding, broken and hurt as hell, and I felt or saw nothing like that.

And the wind... Why wasn´t it with that cheeky moron, Jack Frost?

I gasped and turned to look around me. If the wind was back, maybe he was here too.

_Damn, I should have kept my mouth shut…_, I cursed in my mind and sieved the forest with my eyes to see if someone was moving in the shadows.

I stood there and waited for him to appear from the forest...

But nothing happened.

Soon I noticed, that the wind had left while I hadn´t paid any attention to it. I was relieved now that it was gone, but there was still many questions to be answered.

I finally turned towards Pitch to ask what he thought that had happened just now,

but when I saw his expression the words died on my lips.

He wasn´t angry or irritated about my behaviour… no, nothing like that.

He looked almost ecstatic, like he would have just seen someone perform a miracle right before him. His mouth had turned in a wide smile and his eyes, his silvery-golden eyes, were looking brightly at me.

"Incredible…" Pitch sighed. "Oh, to think…. everything what we could do with this…",

I didn´t say anything. For some reason I had lost my ability to speak.

His gaze turned away from me and he started to walk back and forth in the snow.

He mumbled something as he moved, but I couldn´t hear the words.

And suddenly he stopped walking. For a couple seconds he just stood there, staring at the cold dark forest.

"... _and how quickly they would spread..._", he breathed out.

Then he was so quiet and still, that it looked almost like he had turned into a tall, slender granite sculpture...

But when he slowly turned his gaze at me again, his stare wasn´t so glad anymore.

Now it was measuring and expectant.

"Do it again.", he demanded, and I just looked at him.

I didn´t have any idea what was the reason he stared at me like that…

and whatever he wanted me to do, I wasn´t aware of it at all.

Pitch smiled at me, "It´s okay… I know that you can do it.", he said encouragingly.

But his look was eager, something I had not seen before.

It was so passionate and insisting… telling me that if I´d only do as he said, he would reward me somehow…

but in the other hand, if I disobeyed… I didn´t even want to know.

Now I was afraid that I didn´t have what he wanted.

I tried to sound as fearless as I could, but I failed pathetically.

"W-what do you mean?", I stuttered and my nervousness coloured my voice, making it sound shaky and weak.

His perfect mask cracked a little.

"Do what you just did, sweety. Control the wind." , he said calmly, but I could hear from his voice that his patience was running out.

Control the wind? What was that supposed to mean?!

No-one could ever do that! The wind was something free and wild, something that you could barely touch and definitely never catch.

You couldn´t just call it if it didn´t want to come to you, or tell it where to go and what to do.

A little wind was mostly harmless, but it had the power to change into a huge storm and destroy whatever was on its way….

And now Pitch asked me to whistle for it and put it on a leash, like a little pet dog?!

"W-what?! How am I supposed to do that?! ", I blurted out.

Finally Pitch seemed to realise that I really didn´t know what he meant.

His gentle smile faltered and then faded. He sighed and turned away from me again.

"My, my… seems like I must help you a little. I hoped that I wouldn´t need to rely on this so soon, but what can I do?" , he said and shook his head.

"Desperate times need desperate measures..."

After he gave me a short glance, he walked a couple steps deeper into the forest, closer to the dark and whistled.

The two sharp sounds ran quickly through the forest.

But after that, it was silent. Those two sorrowful whistles were the last sounds I heard.

Suddenly, before I could do anything, the shadows swallowed Pitch and he disappeared.

Then I noticed that the shadows had started to grow taller...

They crawled to take space from the pure white snow and it was now little by little turning black as coal. The forest started to look like a wildfire would had burned and tortured it. The trees hollow bodies were the only remaining things to stand there and the ground was now full of ash that had just been snow. The silence was much worse than if someone had screamed in my ear, and I saw that the shadows were moving closer and closer to me.

My heart pounded loudly in my chest. There was nowhere to run.

Why didn´t Pitch tell them to go away?! Where had he went?! Why had he left me here?!

I backed away from the shadows until I felt a tree´s strong frame behind me.

It was the oak I had hit.

The dent was now much deeper and uglier, like a bleeding bruise, and I saw small drops of red liquid dripping from it. It had painted little stains on my hood and when I looked at my hands, I was terrified. They were covered in it completely. I shrieked and fell in the black snow. I tried to wash my hands with it but the red colour didn´t go away.

The shadows had now taken forms everywhere around me.

They looked like a huge group of hungry beasts and they moved slowly while considering how to kill me. They changed their shape all the time. Huge red eyed dogs... snakes... big wolves with needle sharp teeth... and even so bizarre monsters that I couldn´t name what they were.

I could see every single thing I had ever been afraid of in my whole life while I looked at them, and every second made them change into something more horrifying.

Suddenly, in the middle of the beasts, I noticed a tall figure of a man.

When I saw him walk few steps towards me, even the last little bits of bravery in me died out completely.

_No, he couldn´t be here..._ _He couldn´t have found me... _

_It was impossible... He couldn´t be here..._

"Lilith, Come here."_,_ the man said and held out his hand.

I didn´t take it and I didn´t say anything.

I just backed away from him and shook my head.

_No, no, no, he couldn´t be here…_

The man took a couple steps closer to me and repeated his words. I shuddered.

The oak touched my back again, but this time I didn´t care. I just wanted to run. Even if the beasts would have killed me now, I would have been glad about it. But the whole world had turned dark. There was no forest anymore. The moon had vanished, and the only excisting light was there just to light the man who walked slowly closer to me. But other than that, there was only darkness as far as my eyes could see.

"Lilith, Come here, _NOW_!"_ ,_ the man yelled and now he was almost right in front of me.

I just stared at him, eyes full of fright and dismay. I could hear my heartbeat clearly, it echoed in my head like an execution drum.

Lastly I just crossed my hands, like to say a prayer... except that I didn´t have anything to say.

What would you pray for when the devil itself had come to take you away?

Then the man raised his hand… and I screamed.

**Thanks for reading.**


	8. Chapter 8 - Mother

**I have some unfortunate news, ladies, gentlemen... I´ll release a new chapter maybe only twice a week for now on, since the school is starting soon... **

**But I have also a better announcement to make: They´ll be probably a little bit longer than this chapter. Well, with that said, Enjoy! ;)**

I didn´t want to be a weak little girl anymore. I didn´t want to wake up like I usually did and realise that I was like this again.

_Useless_.

I hated it, and I hated myself for it, but at that moment, when the man raised his hand, just like so many, many times before... I couldn´t help it. I let myself scream. Oh, for the good old times, I let myself scream like never before. I was afraid of that devil before me, and I showed it to the world.

But at the same time, I made a promise. I promised that this would be the last time, last bloody time I would let myself to be this weak.

How many times I had dreamed to be stronger? To have more strength?

All I wanted was to hit back. I didn´t want to scream, cry or beg.

I wanted to hurt _him,_ like he had hurt us, me and mom.

Now I found myself wondering… why did we let him? Why didn´t we leave?

There was two of us, two people who could have just called for help, stop him and make him suffer like he made us for all those years.

But I suppose we were tamed… teached how to be afraid, so we couldn´t fight back.

And we were ashamed too.

Why did we have it this way? Why were we so scared? Why weren´t we brave enough to resist a one single man who ruined our life?

It wasn´t something that we wanted to share, even if we would have gotten the help we so desperately needed.

It was our pride that ruined our lives... but it also kept us living.

But instead of fighting back our pride and getting help, we struggled against our common enemy, an enemy who we were so afraid of, but who we thought that we could someday win on our own.

How foolish we were mom… how stupid that was. Two silly musketeers who were too vain and prideful to ask the third one to help them in the battle, even though they both knew that they could win it that way. So we fought and fought, there wasn´t an end to it.

And the fight still had not ended.

Now mom was fighting alone, I realised. There was no-one to help her, to hold her hand, comfort her or clean up her wounds and bruises.

I understood that there was still someone who had given me something even before Pich did.

My mom had given me life, but even more than that, she had taught me to keep on to it.

No matter what happened.

I couldn´t be like this anymore. I couldn´t just scream or cry every time someone wanted to hurt me.

This time, when _he_ raised his hand against me, I decided that I wouldn´t let him.

I wouldn´t just simply let him hit me like he always did. Not without doing my best to stop him.

Heck, this time I would hit him back, and a million times worse than he could ever imagine.

I took a deep breath and focused. I let my feelings take a form. Whatever they wanted to be.

Something fast and powerful, maybe strong and wild... Something that _I _wanted to be.

Suddenly I felt like there was something moving around me. It weren´t the monsters or shadows that I had seen before.

It was just a shy and curious presence in the air, but it also had a strong feeling in it.

I didn´t stop to wonder what it was or why was it here. I had called it, so it was now mine to command.

I threw all my desperation, sadness, fright and anger towards my father into a one order:

_Destroy him._

It didn´t hesitate. The slight presence in the air started growing and becoming stronger, like my emotions would have fed it. It turned into a raw and rough energy, and it had only one target. The man in front of me.

It pushed him down, but when he hit the ground he didn´t get up anymore.

I saw him shattering into millions of tiny pieces, just like glass.

His expression hadn´t been defeated or angry. It was calm, like he would have known that it was now his time to leave.

_I wasn´t afraid of him anymore._

The shards started to melt, and in a short while there was just a pile of black dust.

Actually, everything had begun to fall apart.

_"Time to wake up...", _I heard a kind familiar voice say, and I opened my eyes.

**Thanks for reading!**


	9. Chapter 9 - Home

**Hello there and sorry for the late update! I think one update in a week is all I can manage, but as you might notice this is a little bit longer, about four (google drive) pages long chapter. ****I tried to be as accurate on the information I gave ya here, in case that some of you are those fans who care much about the details and want them right. Well, I´m not any kind of RotG expert, I just have my endless love for the movie and everything that came with it. So, If some of the things I try to explain here start to disturb your peace of mind, I may hear you out and see what I can do about it. But for now, just enjoy... ;3**

When I woke up in reality, I almost hoped that I wouldn´t have.

I felt sick.

Every muscle in my body was aching, and it was like I would have ran ten miles just minutes ago. Cold sweat had made my back feel sticky and I shivered.

Somehow I was so tired that I couldn´t get up... And the way Pitch smiled at me on my other side didn´t make the situation any better. Right now that grin didn´t look kind to me, but like it would have mocked my weak and pathetic state.

I just wanted to punch it off from his face.

"Glad to have you back Lilith. Did you sleep well?", Pitch said and chuckled.

I groaned and raised a little. I looked around and saw that we weren´t outside anymore. The forest was gone, and now on its place was a big, spacious cave.

Its rough uneven walls were gray and dark and where the light touched them they turned to look almost white. The whole place looked like someone would have stolen all the colors from there.

The cave was cut in many different levels and they were linked to one-another with long narrow stairs. On the edges of some of the platforms I could see delicately carved pillars that stood out nobly from the bland stone, and here and there were skilfully shaped doorways that led further in the depths of the cave. The light came from somewhere above, and I supposed that gaps in the top of the cave led it in.

Finally I noticed that I was resting on an old bed.

It was almost just like the one I had been sleeping on before, but this bed had definitely more age. The pillow was big and lumpy, and the flannel sheets and mattresses were ragged and full of holes. The wooden sides of the bed wobbled from every move I made, and the dust felt like smooth sand under my hands. Not like I would have cared about where I was sleeping on right now. Even the stony floor looked like a high quality bunk to me.

"Where are we?", I asked grumpily. I could feel slight tightness in my head which, from my earlier experiences, told me that I would soon have a headache.

"We are at the outskirts of the city Burgess, near Michigan. This cave is my oldest lair in USA, or it´s actually one of the oldest entrances to it.", He answered and didn´t even seem to notice how irritated I had sounded.

I looked at him and tried to put my thoughts in order.

So this was his lair... but it wasn´t. It was an entrance to it... but... where was the way there then?

I tried to peek from the corner of my eye if he would have placed a helpful sign somewhere, telling the way to go. But, like I had half-expected, there was none. Of course there wasn´t, it would have been way too obvious for Pitch, whose very personality seemed to rotate around everything mysterious, suspicious and unknown. I sighed from annoyance. If I wanted to know something, I just had to ask him. Honesty first, huh...

I had millions of questions for him, and picking one wasn´t easy, since every one of them screamed how important they were.

For some reason I picked one of those most irrelevant ones that weren´t even trying so hard. They probably thought that my brains surely wouldn´t be stupid enough to even look at their way, and that I would ask something meaningful like; Why are we here? What happened? Did I really control the wind? How the hell could I do something like that?! But, nah. I just asked something that didn´t really matter at all… right now at least.

"Do you have many entrances in the USA?", I inquired.

Pitch nodded, "I´ve got plenty of them, but they all are connected to each other in some way. They lead to my home in Venice, Italy. The Guardians are watching about eighty of them at the moment, but they cannot find the way to the main lair since they have no idea where to seek.", he said and waved his hand like it would have been nothing.

"And this is one of the entrances that aren´t under their watch, I suppose?", I said.

Pitch sighed and avoided my sharp eyes, "Well... _Unfortunately_ this cave is part of those seventy-nine others that are being watched, but it´s not really a problem. You don´t need to worry about the Guardians suddenly running in here, since this place has been empty for nine years. I don´t think that they´ll do a check up any time soon. "

I stared at him full of doubt.

"Why did you choose to come here if you had many other places to go? There´s always the possibility that they decide to come back and check if you would be here.", I said.

Pitch had been standing next to me just now, but now he walked few steps closer to the gray walls of the cave. He touched gently the blank rock and sighed.

"Maybe I just got fond to this one particular entrance... I´ve got so many rather interesting memories in here... This place became my home, I didn´t even realise it. I actually had spent many, many years here, even before the Man in the moon had formed the Guardians.", he said quietly.

He turned towards me again.

"You know what it is like, don´t you? To call a place _home_… No matter how big, small,dark, cold, quiet or noisy it is. "

I looked at my hands and nodded without saying anything.

I knew what the word _home _meant and what it stood for. However, I wasn´t sure if it meant the same things to him as it meant to me. For some people, home was the place where they lived. It could have been the house where they grew up or somewhere they had memories attached to, but it really didn´t even have to be a _place._ You didn´t always need to know how to point out your home on a map…

_Home_ could be anywhere where your loved ones were... and to me, home had always been where my mother was.

It wouldn´t have mattered to me if she had been cooking in an unknown kitchen in a house I had never been before. That place would have turned into my home immediately, just because she was there. Where-ever she was, it felt like home to me...

_But... I didn´t have a home anymore. _

_She had sent me away… _

With a short pause, probably meant for my answer to fill, Pitch continued: "Well, I never wanted to leave, but when I was found I couldn´t stay here either... So, I left. But as I moved from a place to another I found out that they were following me. Few years were just constant hiding and looking for a place where the Guardians wouldn´t find me..."

My hands were squeezing the blanket on my legs so hard that my knuckles had turned white,

I hadn´t been waiting for this kind of answer at all. What rights did those bastards have to do that?! They didn´t just force him to leave his home behind, but they even followed, _hunted_ him after that too!

"Why would they do something like that? Drive you away from your own home?!", I asked.

I tried to keep the anger from my voice, but the questions still came out too sharply.

Pitch smiled faintly as he looked somewhere far away. His thoughts seemed to be in the past.

"I am what I am... and first of all, I did not agree with them. I didn´t believe that the way they were helping children was... effective enough.", He said, giving a short glance towards me.

I knew what that look meant.

"Secondly, they wanted to change me. The way I controlled shadows, the way I gave children a little bit _different_ dreams. They didn´t accept the way I had lived thousands of years, so they tried to make me something I wasn´t. They even asked me to be a Guardian!", Pitch laughed.

_Wow... how desperate they must have been._, I thought and smiled. Pitch´s answer had soothed my anger a little, since the Guardians didn´t sound so mighty and powerful anymore. Even they had had their weak moments.

But now they somehow started to seem like some extreme activist group to me...

Maybe they even wore T-shirts with SAVE-THE-CHILDREN! print on the front.

"Did they really chase you just because of that? Because you didn´t agree with them..?"_, _I asked and raised my brows.

Pitch shrugged his shoulders.

"There might have been some other issues that had affected their minds, but nothing very... huge.

I´ve mostly been sticking to the usual steal-little-Timmy´s-candy cane, kind of evil villain stuff." he said and grinned.

"So, from their point of view... I am on the "_bad side_"...", I thought out loud.

"Probably…" Pitch admitted, "But they are not very fast to judge children, and you haven´t really done anything very malicious yet. Well, if blowing up those poor little trees back in the forest doesn´t count. "

My brows that had been up fell now to shadow my eyes, and it made my expression look as astonished as confused at the same time. Somewhere deep in my mind I probably had still thought that my powers had been just a part of my wicked dream.

"Did I really do something like that..?", I asked cautiously.

Pitch´s smile faded a little, but it came back so soon and brightly that even I started to question if I had just imagined things.

Suddenly Pitch took couple quick and lively steps towards the bed and smiled merrily at me.

"Yes, you did Lilith! It was brilliant, magnificent! If you only would have seen yourself then! Even I wouldn´t have believed it, but after I saw it with my own two eyes… to think that someone could _tame_ the wind!" he said excitedly, making all kinds of gestures with his hands in the air, as if he would have tried to explain how the wind had moved at that moment.

A little laughter escaped from my lips, and it surprised me almost as much as it did Pitch. It was just so funny to see him so excited... But it wasn´t like before in the woods. This was more childish and joyful excitement, and the best part was, that I had given it to him.

For a passing moment he had seemed very young and carefree, like a curtain of his usual restrained and calm appearance would have been lifted just for a mere second.

Pitch cleared his throat and straightened his back. Now he was acting all cool and mighty again, but he did it so quickly that it only made me laugh more, this time even harder.

For some reason my reaction made him look abashed, he didn´t seem to understand the reason I was laughing.

"Sorry… I just… Even you can be… funny at times... ", I explained between my laughter and tried to the take the control of it.

It settled down a bit, but now Pitch looked almost shocked.

"Was I… funny..?", he gasped like he wouldn´t have believed what he just heard.

I smiled at him and nodded whole heartily.

"Yep, you were. Why do you sound so surprised? Is it a bad thing?" I asked.

He shook his head.

"No… it is not… I think. No-one has just ever said that to me… well not without being sarcastic at least.", he said and scraped his chin. He looked almost like he would have been deeply considering how this affected his _super villainous _ego, and the thought made me giggle.

I leaned back to the old pillow behind me.

Laughing felt great, I didn´t even remember when was the last time I had done that, but I still couldn´t ignore the slight pain it caused in my aching body.

Pitch sighed and gave up. He probably had come into the conclusion that figuring out what was going on inside my mind would take too much work and time.

"I´m not used to be laughed at." he just murmured.

I smiled to his slightly embarrassed and displeased expression and yawned.

Really… How could I still be tired after sleeping two months and a day?

But no matter how much I tried to deny it, I was exhausted.

I blinked my eyes as they were starting to shut, and when Pitch saw that, he grinned.

"I see that you´re still quite tired, Lilith... I´ll let you rest for a while and come back later.", he said and turned to walk away, but I didn´t want him to leave.

"No!", I raised up fast, way too fast, and fell back in the bed.

Above me, the roof of the cave had started to spin unpleasantly, and it made me feel dizzy and even worse than before.

I heard Pitch click his tongue and I felt how his hands settled the blanket better on me.

"This is no good… You should let yourself rest. Calling the wind seems to take a great amount of your energy with it.", he said with a calming, peaceful tone.

"But I don´t want to sleep..." I mumbled, and tried to fight back the sleepiness which was slowly wrapping me on its heavy embrace. I didn´t want to fall asleep just to see more nightmares again. I had already given up from the hope of feeling rested when I´d woke up, so it didn´t sound very pleasant idea to slumber now.

Pitch stroke gently my hair, "Hush… just sleep for now. We have much to do when you wake up, and I´d prefer your mind to be sharp and ready to learn then..."

With a deep sigh, I gave up and finally closed my eyes. I let myself drown in the soundless ocean which had been calling me to rest.

And from somewhere far, far away, on the verge of sleep, I heard Pitch humming a melody beside me.

Its sorrowful tunes echoed in my head and when they slowly faded away, a quiet whisper told a promise in my ear;

"_Do not worry, little one, for I'll take the nightmares away… "_

**Sleeping? Again? REALLY?! Oh boogers... **

**Well fear not my friends, there will be more action coming ahead. Just be patient.**

**Thanks for reading! ;3**


	10. Chapter 10 - Impasse

**Oh my godness! Has it been days? Or weeks? Months? Years?! I can´t remember anymore!**

**Well it definitely has been a long time, and just like many times before, it is my time to apologise. It seems that I lack the time and proper motivation to keep sharing a new chapter with you every week. I am sorry... it´s not your fault, it´s mine... You´ve been beautiful, amazing, shmexy, patient and well behaving readers. In other words everything what I could possibly ask from a reader. No, I´m not just licking your asses before I vanish and stop writing... the show must go on and it shall go on. I´m just trying to make you know that you are appreciated. **

**Okay, today I´m going to introduce you to my new friend; dot, dot, dot. I´m pretty sure you can see him even from up here, and if you don´t, just scroll down a little and you´ll see him. I´m going to use DDD whenever I want to travel in time a little bit further or sometimes I might even use him to switch between characters. You probably have seen this kind of usage of DDD before, the lovely little fanfic-fans you are, but I just wanted to explain this new horrifying creature before you run away and see it chasing you in your worst nightmares. ****Please don´t be afraid of him... he probably just wants a hug.**

**Ps. Someone asked me what´s my mother tongue, so the answer to your question is: (dundundundundun) Finnish! ^^ **

**Yep, I´m a Finn. So my love for Santa and Frost is very real, indeed. It is known that Santa has his home somewhere around the Korvatunturi... buuuut I think the North Pole fits him just fine as well. Okay, nevermind that. Back to the business! **

**And as always: Enjoy. ;)**

Like Pitch had promised, I didn´t see any nightmares that night. Actually, I didn´t see any kind of dreams at all. All I saw was a blank endless space.

It seemed strange, like something would have been missing... There was just nothing to fill the white horizon.

I opened my eyes and raised up from the bed. I had been sleeping my shoes on and the blanket had wrapped tightly around me, making it feel like straitjacket. I wiggled myself free from it and stood up. The coldness of the stone floor didn´t get to my feet through my shoes, they still had the same cloudy feeling as they had had yesterday. My muscles didn´t hurt anymore, now there was only a slight ache which people normally would have a day after workout, and I knew that it would probably pass as soon as I´d just start moving. I turned, my eyes searching for Pitch, but I didn´t see him anywhere around.

I didn´t feel disappointed, if he had still been here it would just seemed strange.

He probably had gone to do something while I had slept.

Come to think of it, why wouldn´t he have much better things to do than creeping alongside my bed and watching me sleep…?

As I walked towards the long stairs leading to the next floor, I tried to decide between two plans that had formed in my mind; Either to go to look for Pitch and ask him what to do... _or _to wander around a little and see what kind of secrets this place had to offer. I knew that the first option was much more rational choice, but I was curious, I wanted to know more about this place. If I´d go to see Pitch right away he would probably take me somewhere he wanted me to go… but there must be some places that he wouldn´t let me go...

And those were the ones I especially wanted to see.

So I made a compromise, I could look for Pitch as I wandered around the lair.

For some reason I nodded to myself, like to confirm my own decision, and with that, I started to walk up the stairs and approached one of the countless doorways carved on the walls.

. . .

"Oh crap...", I muttered when I saw a familiar group of stalactites before me.

I had stopped to view them for a while when I saw them for the first time since I had never been in a dripstone cave before, but after the third and fourth time, I had to admit that the look of them was getting quite… old. I groaned with irritation and sat on the ground. The room, or more specifically a round wide space somewhere deep underground, had multiple doors all around it, and they all led in different directions. Or so I had thought...

It turned out that at least four of them were linked to each other, and I assumed that they weren´t the only paths that would lead me back here. I wished that I would have a ball of wool, like Theseus on his way to slay the Minotauros... Even a marker would have been nice, not as poetic, but it would have worked too.

But since I had neither of those, I just sat there, before of the stalagmites that rose from the ground, and tried to remember which doorways I had already used. I was pretty sure about two of the paths I had already been to, but the other two could have been any of them. I sighed and rose up. Sitting here doing nothing wouldn´t help me in any way, and _The helpless princess in a dripstone cave_ didn´t really sound like a grand fairytale.

Plus, I didn´t want Pitch to find me here and make me admit that all this could have been completely avoided if I only had said something to him.

I let myself forget the doorways for a second and looked for some kind of rocks so I could mark the paths I had already used. I found three reasonable sized stones that were noticeable enough to be any help, but the other ones had been either so small that they would have been classified as sand rather than stones, or so big that I needed to be a bodybuilder to move them around.

Once again I sighed and stopped to think. I looked at the three flat stones on my hand and hid them then inside my palm. I hadn´t noticed it before but now I saw that my hand was slightly shaking. Was it fear? Was I really so afraid? I hadn´t even seen it coming. The fear of being left here, alone, forever... It had just creeped in my mind and made its home inside. And I was indeed afraid... very afraid.

I had left this room four times already and on each time I had come back. I knew nothing about this place and I had to admit that leaving without Pitch had been foolish.

My feet felt weak but I didn´t really want to sit down. It would have been the same thing as I would have given up and said that I couldn´t go on anymore. And I wasn´t sure if I could rise up if did that.

So instead, I just grinded my teeth in frustration and kicked blindly something I had just spotted from the ground. It didn´t fly very far but to my surprise it let out a quiet clink as it hit one of the stalagmites. _It couldn´t be a stone that´s for sure._

Filled with sudden curiosity I walked to see what the object was. I took a couple steps and bent over to take the object from the ground, and I frowned when I saw what it was.

I had just picked up some kind of a golden tube... That was the only way I could describe it.

I turned it in my hands and heard a faint tinkle coming from inside it. I got the tube close to my ear and shook it. Something small, like a tiny stone, jingled inside it, and I wanted to open the object just to see what the thing was. The tube was flat from one side and it was decorated with a beautiful golden and crystal blue pattern. I wondered if I could open it from there, but when I tried, the tube remained persistently closed. I turned it in my hands many times but I couldn´t see any kind of handle, lock or lever on it... I even knocked the box few times on the ground, but just like before, nothing happened.

I was just about to toss it somewhere when I noticed a small picture on the side of the capsule. I saw a young girl, probably only my age, smiling cleverly at me from the both ends of the tube. She had raven black hair like me, cutted short in a quite old fashioned way and her eyes were green like the leafs of an aspen tree. Somehow she seemed like someone who could feed you lies from morning to noon without you even realising it. But I knew that she wouldn´t have done that... there was too much warmth in her smile... and... in an odd way, she resembled someone I knew. I just wasn´t sure who.

I looked around me even though I knew it was unnecessary. There was no-one besides me in the cave and this couldn´t possibly be considered as stealing... right?

The tube had probably been here for a long, long time and it was covered in dust.

So in the end, since there wasn´t anyone who could possibly have missed it... I took the box and put it in the pocket of my tunica. It wasn´t exactly the safest place for it, but gladly it fit there just fine.

I turned around and finally put the stones I had in front of the two paths I was sure about. Then I looked at the others.

"Here we go...", I murmured and chose randomly one of them, the golden box clinking quietly in my pocket.

. . .

It took me many other attempts to finally find the doorway leading away from the dripstone cave, and when I saw the narrow stairs leading up, instead of down, I wanted to kiss them and praise the whatever-got-me-out-of-there.

I didn´t do it though, I was still sane enough. Still, I had to fight back my tears so I wouldn´t cry from relief.

I ran up the stairs and on the other end of them opened the most beautiful view.

I stood on a cliff at the very top of the cave, almost so high that I could touch its ceiling, and looked down to the maze of long, short, narrow and wide stairs.

From here I could see that there was even some kind of bridges down below.

But the crisscross of stairs and bridges wasn´t what made the place beautiful…

It was the light.

Its shimmering touch made the dust look like little pieces of gold, flowing gently in the air, and from here everything looked somehow warmer.

_The place where I slept had most likely been somewhere really down below, since the light had not reached it almost at all..._, I thought.

The endless wandering in the tunnels had confused my sense of time and direction. I had thought that I was somewhere really far in the depths of the cave, but I had actually seen just a tiny bit of it.

From the edge of my vision I saw something shining and reflecting slightly the light, and when I turned my head... I couldn´t stop stearing.

Nothing had warned me about the sight before me.

In front of me I saw a black, hollow frame of a cage hanging from a long chain.

Its bars were thin and fragile-looking, but they were set so close to one another, that even the smallest bird couldn´t escape between them. It had four sharp ends, like thorns, and it made the cage look like one of those insect repeller lamps which some people had on their terrace to kill mosquitos and other poor insects. Its shape reminded more of a lantern though.

I stared at it for some time and soon, even to my own surprise, I noticed that I found the cage almost beautiful on its own cruel way... but even after that it still caused cold shivers run through me.

I walked a little closer to it, but I couldn´t reach it. There was at least two feat gap between me and the cage. I didn´t try to lean forward just to touch it, dying like that was not really in accordance with my plans…

Well... it wouldn´t have been in accordance with my plans if I´d had any.

I was going to walk away from the cage, but something caught my eye from a distance. I saw the same kind of faint shine from there, and when I turned my head to look at it, I almost forgot how to breath…

Now I knew why Pitch put my resting place so down below.

I stared at the enormous group of cages which were just like the one before me. Was there two hundred of them… or more? I couldn´t count them.

There was just too many…

Some of the cages had two or three floors, like little houses, very, very uncomfortable houses, and some of them were so huge that even I could fit inside them, even just the thought gave me goosebumps.

But they weren´t the only cages here, now I noticed that there was dozens of those same fragile-looking prisons, and the reason I hadn´t seen them before was that they all were on different levels. When I gave a closer look at the ceiling, I could spot the long chains holding steadily their own little cages up in the air.

In an insane way I was glad for Pitch, since seeing those as the first thing when I´d wake up could have been quite horrifying, but… what on earth was going on in here?!

A strange mixture of confusion, horror and anger started to storm in my mind.

_Why are they here? Had Pitch made them? Why would he need so many of these? _

_No... why would he need these at all?!_

I tried to understand and come up with a good reason for Pitch to have them here, but I gave up soon.

Cages had only one purpose, and that was to keep something from getting away.

I needed to see him. Right now.

I turned around and seeked for stairs that could lead me down. I walked back and forth near of the steep edge… but soon I noticed that there wasn´t a way down. I ran desperately across the ledge and tried to find a place where I could get to the bottom floors, but soon I was forced to admit the fact that there was only one way I could leave.

The same door I had come here.

I felt how the cold grip of anxiety slowly started to twist my insides.

I didn´t want to go back… I couldn´t. I had seen and felt what the tunnels had done to me…

_But what other options did I have?_

**A little bit short I admit (or is it? I dunno...), but I have the next chapter already started and It will hopefully be here much sooner than this one. **

**Thank you for reading! ^^**


	11. Chapter 11 - Fears from the past

**Ho ho ho, long time no read! **

**What? A new chapter? Just when you thought that I had dropped this project of mine and moved to live in the real world for once? Darn it! Unfortunately the real world "sucks jingle bells" and I decided that you guys deserve a proper Christmas gift from me since I´ve been ignoring you guys for a way too long time now. Of course I wrote something nice and jolly as you probably expected. Hey, when have I ever written anything depressing or sad? I hope you aren´t too angry or hungry since it´s the most wonderful time of the year (okay, I´m just a little bit late). **

**Happy holidays, folks! **

I stopped and stared blindly forward… My mind had brought me back to the tunnels.

It felt like I would have been wandering around there for an eternity. The time had meant nothing on those endless roads and the memory of the cold walls around me was clear as day in my head.

The paths I had been to were filled with darkness, and the strange feeling of loneliness had haunted me everywhere, no matter where I went. From somewhere far away I had heard the silent echoes of something that had already been forgotten decades ago… and if I wouldn´t have gotten out of there, in the end, my last sobs would probably joined to wander around the tunnels too.

I acted brave when I was there, I tried not to think too closely how the shadows tried to trick me to follow them or make me see something that wasn´t there. Without even a memory of light or sounds, moving forward had felt like an endless journey to someplace I didn´t even remember anymore… and once… I actually forgot where I was going.

I didn´t remember _what_ was I looking for.

I just walked and walked without knowing my destination, and I stopped only when the feeling of loneliness had grown so overwhelming that it almost made me lose my mind. There was no-one to ask help, no other than the shadows which weren´t answering to my calls. They were there, but not to help me. They were always hiding somewhere, nowhere to be seen.

But I wasn´t afraid of them.

I was afraid that _I _wasn´t strong enough to walk amongst them, not without my mind drowning into their distressing whispers.

In the end, it was the desperate urge of seeing the light that kept me going, even after everything else had lost their importance…

And also that little calming sound coming from my pocket.

_Clink-clink-clink…_

That was the only sound I had trusted, the only sound I knew I hadn´t just imagined.

So... as sad and crazy it felt now… The sound had been my loyal companion through the tunnels.

If it was like that, could I turn around and return there now? Even without knowing if I´d find my way to the light again?

I walked slowly to the edge of the cliff and looked down again. There was a couple hundred feet fall between me and the closest bridge.

_I don´t think that´s even an option..._, I thought and gulped.

I moved away from the edge and kicked the ground, it made a little cloud of dust rise in the air. It shined beautifully for a moment and then spread in the air and lost its shape.

Yesterday I had been so brave. I had defeated _him, _the worst of my fears.

But why was I still afraid?

What was there to be afraid of anymore?!

I marched in front of the same long stairs I had just climbed up.

_What if the shadows would leave me alone this time…?_, I thought

They couldn´t hurt me… they could trick me, but not hurt me.

_I could be strong enough… , _I told myself over and over again.

I didn´t see the other end of the stairs, they were swallowed by the darkness. The thought of walking back down there, to the world without light, without sounds or people… It terrified me now even more than before.

When I stood here, where the sunlight stroke gently my back and where even the meaningless dirt had turned into gold, going to that cold voiceless place seemed like hell.

But still I tried to convince myself to go back. It felt like madness.

_Why would I leave this heaven I had just found?,_ I asked myself with genuine wonder_, _like a little child who could not understand the reason she shouldn´t take a toy from her sister...

Now I just sighed shook my head.

I wasn´t a toddler anymore, and I didn´t have any siblings to steal toys from. There was no way to avoid it.

_I just had to go._

I closed my eyes and stepped closer to the doorway. I could already feel the cold air coming from the tunnels.

I took a deep breath and walked slowly to the first step. Then on the second one…

third… fourth… fifth… sixth...

… But when I was going to step down to the seventh one, just a one small fearsome thought stopped me.

I was standing right before the gaping jaws of the darkness and I didn´t want to look down. I wanted to turn back to the light…

I should have moved on… I should have forgotten my fears and tried to find Pitch...

But now fear wasn´t just a feeling. It had turned into a river of words and whispers:

_What if you´ll never find a way out..?, _I heard someone say in my mind with a voice resembling the hissing of a snake.

I shook my head and tried to get the voice from my head. I couldn´t be shaken now. I had made my mind.

"_That won´t happen",_ I told to myself. "_Pitch will find me"._

But now I just heard an amused tone in the voice: _Oh, really? And why would he use his time in looking for something so needless and weak as you? Finding a child just like you… no… even better than you… It is not that hard. All he has to do is to replace you..., _the voice whispered to me and chuckled.

"_He wouldn´t do that. He promised.", _I said, but my words came out just a little bit unsure. It seemed to be enough.

Now the voice in my mind laughed, a high pitched almost mad laughter.

It felt like a punch, leaving me breathless and making me falter. The small belief in me which had even right from the beginning been so weak and vulnerable was starting to rip apart more and more...

_What is a one little promise worth for someone who lives forever?, _My fears asked, their voice colored with disdain. _What is a one little promise worth for someone who has all time in the world?!_

I put my hands on my ears. I didn´t want to hear more. But it didn´t help... the voice was coming inside of me and I couldn´t escape it.

_Do you think that you´re somehow special? Just because Pitch chose you?, _The voice asked. _What if there has been hundreds, maybe thousands of children who have been chosen before you? Oh how funny would that be... What if you are actually a replacement for someone who breathes no longer? Just a one child who will get replaced too, as soon as she isn´t usefull anymore…_

The same mad, nervewracking laughter rised in my mind once more, now even louder than before, and I felt like I could throw up just from the anxiety and fear it caused in me.

"Shut up!", I shouted. "SHUT UP!"

I felt tears filling my eyes an blurring my vision, but I didn´t let them fall… There was no way I would let myself be so weak. My anger was little by little starting to overcome the fear, and I hold onto it. I wouldn´t be like that... I wouldn´t be useless. That was my promise, and I would keep it. No matter what Pitch would decide to do.

The laughter had slowly started to fade; _What are you going to do?, _the voice asked mockingly. _What could you possibly do…?_

Now I was completely silent. My cheeks were dry, my eyes blank, just like before. I didn´t move. I just stood there, the time stopping around me and moving only around that one question.

"_What could I do..?_", I whispered to myself.

And then, again, I felt that light little consciousness. I noticed that it was drifting everywhere around me.

In the tunnels, at the end of the stairs and even right above me. Where ever it moved I could feel it as we would be a one silently moving force.

How come I hadn't noticed it before?

It was so strange… Just once before I had felt this warmth beside me and now I already felt like it belonged there, like it had always been something belonging to me. I rised my head and called it, and I felt an instant respond. It was just a light breeze of air against my face. I did it again and got the same result.

Without myself even noticing it the corners of my mouth had started to rise.

Now I called it even louder, more eagerly. First the light breeze turned into a weak push, and then, when I invoked it even more, maybe even too much, a strong blow almost threw me down the stairs. It startled me for a moment but the smile was back on my face in no time. I almost felt like laughing, giggling for no reason.

I wasn´t even thinking of going back to the tunnels anymore.

I just ran up the stairs. I wanted to know what I could do.

I looked around and wondered what I should do. Should I make some kind of gestures with my hands? Should I keep calling it in my mind?

What a weird decision to make...

After couple tries I knew that calling the wind would work for sure, so I moved into practising with my hands. The wind had obeyed me flawlessly when I asked it to do something but I wasn´t sure if I could move it without making any sound. Was I just someone who could command the wind to do what I wanted, or did the power actually come from me?

I bent down and took some dust into my hands. It was grey and smooth and I knew that even the slightest breeze of air would blow it away.

I concentrated as hard as I could to move the dust, to find something inside me. Just anything that would even slightly resemble the wind. I could hear the beating sound of my heart, and I focused to block everything else from my mind. What in me could be like the wind? What part within me could hold this kind of power…?

Then I tought the moment when I had felt it for the first time… When I saw my father in the woods.

The wind had been so close… its presence had been so real It almost felt like if I would have streched out my hand I would have felt its silvery smooth fur. And then, when my father had taken another step closer to me, when he already was way too near…

Now I remembered the fear, the anger, the hopelessness I felt at that moment, and suddenly, without any commands or orders, the dust was gone.

I breathed out from amazement when it glittered in the air once again. The wind hadn´t been as powerful as before but the dust was blown away even before I had decided to do so.

I laughed from disbelief. As stupid, wonderful, childlish and even mad it was… My feelings were the answer.

All I had to do was to feel something… anything! How could I have a power like this!?

Not only I could command the wind to do what I wanted, but I could actually move the air around me. I could make it myself!

I was full of excitement and I decided to put it on use. I pulled my right hand out and held it above the ground.

First there was just a moment of silence. Nothing happened.

But slowly... just when I thought I couldn´t do it afterall... the dust on the ground started to move. A small breeze of wind moved around on the ground, forming a circle of air and dust. Now I held my left hand out too. I wanted to make it even bigger, much stronger.

The circle grew two times bigger and I encouraged it with both my hands and my mind.

It already reached up to my waist but somehow I felt like it wasn´t enough, and even when it started to gather the dust around it, I wanted more. I encouraged it to grow larger, stronger and much bigger than before, and soon, the vortex of dust had already become taller than me. It made my hair swing wildly in the air, but I didn´t care. I smiled like never before. The feeling of power felt amazing, like I could finally show what was inside of me. I was so strong! No one could come into my way now!

As my small tornado kept growing, I noticed that it also became harder to keep it in control. I didn´t say anything but I tried to soothe it a little.

For a second I thought that it had listened to me, but then I noticed that it was actually now growing even faster than before. I tried again.

My excitement had started to fade and I was getting nervous.

I didn´t want to make it any larger than it was.

I asked it to become smaller, I plead it to stop, but the vortex kept growing. It didn´t listen to me anymore.

I could feel that it took its energy from me but I wasn´t in the control anymore. I was terrified.

The wind fed itself with my nervousness and fright and mocked me by growing even taller every time I asked it to stop.

It had already become so huge that standing straight was nearly impossible. I was slowly being pulled closer and closer to it.

My mind was running wild trying its best to find a way to stop the wind, but to my surprise, I didn´t have to. Someone else did it for me. I felt a hand on my shoulder and I sighed from relief. It was gentle and familiar… It belonged to someone who would surely help me...

At least that´s what I tought, but the next thing I felt wasn´t kind at all.

Suddenly a sharp pain ran through my head like a dagger and shattered the feeling of relief into pieces. I shrieked from pain and fell to my knees. For a moment I could swear I could hear his voice. It was calling me again and again… He was mad… I had done something wrong… Why did I ever disobey him… He would just hurt us even more… and when he would hurt mom it would me my fault… My fault alone…!

I wasn´t in the cave anymore. I was in my room. I regonized the purple colored wallpaper that had started to shatter from the edges.

I remembered the dark wooden floor that felt cold under my feet no matter what time of the year it was. My room was clean and tidy. Even though it was quite dark since it had just one lamp to lighten it and no windows, it wasn´t scary at all. I saw my teddy at the small wooden bench right next to the futon I liked to call my bed.

The teddy looked at me with its one black button eye like it always did, sadly and wearily. I wasn´t sure if the teddy was sad because it was missing its other eye or because of the things it had seen with the one it still had. I also wasn´t sure if its look was so weary because it knew what was going to happen soon or because I had ripped it apart in anger once when I was smaller, maybe it was afraid that I would do it again. We both surely had some trust issues.

But no… in the end, no matter how I looked at it, nothing in my room was scary. I wouldn´t have been afraid even if I´d met a child who would come here and tell me that she saw some stranger staring at her in the big mirror on the wall… I wouldn´t have even blinked my eyes if she had told me that she heard voices coming from the closet I had next to my door.

I wasn´t stupid. I knew something that that little child couldn´t yet understand.

I knew that the scary things weren´t at my room.

They were right on the other side of the door.

The scary things were a someone, and this someone was a man, and this man was always shouting and screaming and hurting someone else.

Sometimes with words, sometimes with fists. Of course that idiot child wouldn´t understand what was happening there. She would believe that someone would come and save them… She would say that if she believed in something really, really much, it could come true. That child had no idea of the way things actually were… I know this, because I used to be that child. Now I knew better.

I stared the white door in front of me and waited. I sat completely still and listened what was happening on the other side of the door, this wasn´t the first time. The whole apartment was silent, I could hear the cars moving outside the building, but other than that, I couldn´t hear a thing. It didn´t make me relaxed… It made me just more anxious. This silence wasn´t peaceful.

Then, a sudden scream broke it, like someone had just put the volume on. Now I heard sobs… and pleading… I could tell that it was a woman… It was mom. Just like I remembered… Just like that time…

"Please, Thomas… No don´t! It was my fault! ", she screamed. I heard that she tried to stop my father, but her pleas ended soon. She fell on the floor.

My hands were shaking and I felt cold sweat running down my back. I remembered what happened after that very well, too well.

The sounds of his steps would come at my door.

He would knock four times.

He would do it almost so hard that even someone in the street would probably wonder where the sound came from.

And he wouldn´t do it because he had to… He wouldn´t knock so I would have time to hide either…

He´d do it just because he knew I couldn´t move, just because he knew that I wouldn´t even dare to think of hiding or running away. He knew that I wouldn´t do anything because that would have made him hurt mother. And he knew that It was the same other way around too.

Now he was going to punish mom.

That was the reason he knocked at my door, why he came into my room and why he grabbed my arm and pulled my hair so I´d have to stand up.

That´s why he looked at me with his green bloodshot eyes now.

His look wasn´t sharp, his eyes wondered a bit.

"You can thank your mother from this.", he said.

Then he started pulling me towards the living room.

**Thanks for reading... and as I said: Happy holidays!  
**

**The next chapter will hopefully be here sooner than this one. Thank you for sticking around! **


	12. Chapter 12 - Monster

_**"Hello, hello? Anybody out there? Cause I don't hear a sound. Alone, alone... I don't really know where the world is but I miss it now..."**_

**So hi, I'm here again. Alive and well. You probably thought that I had stopped writing this already, I don't blame you, I myself thought that too... until I noticed a small message on my inbox two days ago. Someone had commented on this forgotten work and it made me almost laugh. But then it made me also kinda sad. I had stopped writing this because it had become harder and harder to _believe_ when the snow had melted and the countless tests and exams had eaten my free time. But now I've decided that I want to give you something more and that I won't stop here. You deserve to hear the rest of the story and even if I don't know how long that will take, I hope you'll have patience and stick around. Brace yourselves, the summer vacation is coming... which means more free time and that means more chapters. I started writing this last summer, I might as well end this on this summer... who knows? Thank you for reading my story, whoever you are, I love you. ;)**

* * *

The first thing I noticed was that I was crying, even though I had tried so hard not to do that earlier. The tears in my eyes had spilled over and it made me angry. My hands were shaking and clinging onto something very hard, but I couldn´t focus my thoughts enough to care. I couldn´t get up. My father´s words were still echoing in my head and breathing felt almost impossible. What I had seen hadn´t been a nightmare, I´d have given almost anything so it would have been just that.

Instead, it had been a memory.

I remembered that night really well. It happened some time after I had turned eleven. My mother had once again sent me to my room when she had felt that the conversation between her and father was starting to turn too heated. It was a precaution she had used many times. Such a silly and small thing to do really, but she had probably hoped that my father wouldn´t bother dragging me all the way from my room. She had seriously thought that it would help, and I couldn´t blame her, it had worked so many times before.

I had no idea about the reason they were shouting to each other that time, I usually didn´t, but it seemed like mom had once again crossed the invisible line my father had drawn in his mind.

And because of that I couldn´t go to school for the next day.

I couldn´t go to school for a week.

And what did they say to the teachers?

"She's sick."

It had been the first time _he_ hadn´t really even cared if other people would see what he had done to me. He had been blinded by his meaningless anger, his crazy need to control us. All that mattered to him was that my mother would see everything clearly and remembered so not to talk back to him. And the worst thing was that it had worked. Even now she would remember that lesson when she'd look at my face.

I let my right hand ease its grip from whatever it was holding and raised it just above my left eye. There, in the corner of my brow, I could feel a narrow, almost invisible scar. It was faint and nearly impossible to see from a distance, but my mother had always noticed it.

Always.

That was one of the reasons I usually hid my face behind my hair.

I knew that she had tried to hide it from me, but even if it was just for a mere second, her pained expression hurt me too. We never spoke about it, we didn´t have to... and we didn´t really want to either. It was much easier to pretend that nothing had happened.

I had almost forgotten this mark my old life had left in me…

Even if the scar was almost invisible, it would always be a part of me, I couldn´t wash it away or pretend that it wasn´t there any longer. There was no way for me to run from the life I had tried to escape.

I felt the anger rise in my mind. I had been so happy and proud when I had defeated just a little nightmare. It had been just a dream. How arrogant it had been to think that nothing could come into my way after that.

In reality I had been just a kitten who had thought she´d became a lion.

But that wasn´t what hurt me the most.

After all this... my fear for him was still alive, I was still afraid of _him_…

I sat there for while and waited until I could breathe normally again, and when my hands had stopped shaking I finally turned my eyes to see what I had been squeezing.

I gasped from realisation and jumped up.

I looked at the wrinkles I had made on Pitch´s cape and stumbled a couple steps further away from him. My cheeks were still wet from tears when I turned to look at his face, but I couldn´t meet his eyes. He didn´t look at me either. He gave me the time to pull myself together, but his expression didn´t show any emotions.

There was no way I could have told what he was thinking.

I wiped my tears quickly to my sleeve and prepared to face his look.

He sighed.

"Don´t be ashamed, Lilith. I know that fear is a strong emotion, even an overwhelming force. You can not escape it, just like you can´t escape those memories you hold from your life before. You also can´t choose not to be afraid, for feeling fear is a part of your existence. You are bound to that rule. However... I am sorry that I used your fear. "

I faced his golden eyes. Once again I could see the sorrow and pain he had within him.

He said that he was sorry, but now I felt something else awakening in me. It was a doubt, it was a warning, it was something that I had felt right away when I had met him for the first time too.

"You did that? You showed me that memory?", I whispered and backed away from him. "Why?"

Pitch´s voice was emotionless: "Like I told you, fear is powerful. I needed to stop your powers from getting the hold of you... and I did. "

Even though the distance between us was slowly growing wider and wider I still felt that I should get further away from him. My feet kept moving but I wasn´t really the one making those commands. I didn't even know who was controlling my movements at that moment. _I shouldn´t be here…, _I heard my own voice in my mind. This was crazy.

"You used fears... against me? How is that even possible? You said that fear is part of my existence… that I am bound to it… But yet you used the fear within me yourself. Aren´t you bound to your fears as well, like me?", I asked, trying to understand his words.

To my surprise Pitch chuckled to my question. It seemed to amuse him.

"I am, yes. But unlike you, I´m not just bound to them." Pitch said and looked at the shadows the cages threw on the walls. I looked at them too and he smiled almost sadly. I saw how the shadows moved, how they lurked slowly nearer Pitch, longing to get closer to him.

He looked at me again.

"Child, Can´t you see? I am the fear itself. I am not just one with the shadows but the one who makes them… The Nightmare king. "

I couldn´t say anything. I could not think any words powerful enough.

Except "You´ve gone crazy. Go see a doctor." of course.

Yes, I could have said that... but I didn´t dare to. The things I had seen so far, the miracles Pitch had told me about and the way my senses responded to him, giving me louder warnings by every second my eyes met his, convinced me that he wasn´t lying. All this, plus the fact that I had tamed the wind, something no one had ever done... What wasn´t possible in this world anymore?

Why would he lie to me…? And in the other hand... why wouldn't he? Everything felt twisted and wrong, nothing made sense anymore.

I felt how a silent unbelieving chuckle rose from my throat and cracked the wall of silence between us for a moment. I couldn´t stop staring.

My saviour was the King of the Nightmares. He had caused pain and fear to people.

Even to me. I knew for sure that he had created my nightmare in the woods and showed me my father, that he had brought one of my memories back to haunt me. And if he truly was the king who ruled the nightmares… there was the possibility, no, the certainty that he had also given them all to me. I wanted to scream.

Was it because of frustration or fear? I did not know.

Hadn´t it been enough that I knew what fear was? Why did I also have to know _who_ it was?!

Oh, The Guardians had indeed been either really brave or really dumb... they had hunted the fear itself.

Pitch took my sudden silence as horror.

"Was this too soon? Are you frightened of me?", he asked with a wide smile as he tilted his head, and something in his voice made it almost sound like he was daring me to deny it. I would have gladly done so, said that nothing had changed and that I saw him just like before, maybe even added something cheeky after that... But my chuckle was still the only voice I had let out after his reveal. My lips didn´t let any other words come out, they didn´t allow me to lie.

Even so, a one childish question slipped daringly past them:

"Did you steal my dreams?", I blurted out.

Pitch looked at me for a moment in full astonishment and after a couple seconds he bursted into a loud laughter:

"So you think that I _stole_ your dreams?", he said with a wide amused smile "Oh you silly girl, how does one steal something that´s not there? You didn´t have any dreams full of beauty and wonder for me to twist or steal. You had absolutely nothing. Even I myself was surprised. Such a lovely case to hold even the most wondrous dreams, but even so, your mind remained empty."

"So you thought that giving me nightmares would be better than letting me see my empty dreams?!", I shouted furiously. Maybe he hadn´t stole anything from me but I still couldn´t understand his actions.

I felt betrayed.

My anger seemed to surprise Pitch and his smile died out completely. His expression was now made of stone, it was cold and lifeless. Like this he indeed looked like the Nightmare king he was. He could have stepped right from a storybook before me, his page surely the darkest in the whole book, filled completely with the black and grey crayon colour.

"You don´t know what it is like...", he started, but then he quickly stopped and tried again…

"I saw you when the others didn´t even know you excisted. What should I have done?! I wanted- I needed to do something, anything! So yes, I gave you nightmares, the only thing I had to trade. I knew that you couldn´t be fixed with fear alone… but if you had only seen me…", he spoke between his teeth.

I saw that he was struggling to find the words he was looking for and after a while he gave up. His face was turned down almost like he would have been the one who was hurt. His hand hid his golden eyes. Then I heard another bitter chuckle from him.

"It doesn´t really matter does it… " he said and smiled wryly.

"You must hate me now, don´t you? I must seem like a monster. Did your parents perhaps tell you about me? Did they warn you about the terrifying _Boogeyman_? ", Pitch asked, sudden curiosity lifting a little his intimidating tone.

Now I noticed how far Pitch actually was from me, but my legs didn´t stop. They kept carrying me slowly away from him like he would have been a dangerous beast I shouldn't anger by quick motions.

I felt like I should run but I couldn´t look away from Pitch. My eyes were caught in his and he didn´t let me go.

I took a shivering breath and answered him:

"_They did tell me about you…_" I said silently "_But I never believed in you_."

Pitch´s smile disappeared and his eyes seemed almost fiery. His perfect mask broke and now I saw more than he had wanted to show me before.

Bitterness and anger burned in his gaze and all I wanted to do was to hide, to go somewhere those eyes couldn´t reach me.

I backed away even more, much quicker this time. I was scared.

But then, as quickly as it had appeared, the look was gone. For a moment I caught a brief flash of worry on his face when his eyes widened as he looked behind me.

"Lilith, stop!", Pitch cried, but he was too late.

My next step didn´t hit the ground. For a moment I was completely weightless.

Then I fell. I saw how the cliff started to get smaller and smaller as I spinned through the air, but I couldn't scream or even shriek. My mind was a mess of confused thoughts and incredulous questions and I couldn´t make any sense to them.

A man I had just met, a man I had believed to be my saviour was a monster.

I didn't know who I should have blamed, him for betraying my trust, or myself for giving it to him.

"Wind... Carry me away...", I sighed, suddenly being more tired than I had ever been.

I closed my eyes and let the wind decide where it would take me.

That is how I left him.

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**And so the story continues...**

**I've got another shorter chapter in store for you, so you don't need to await another five months for an update...**

**Seriously, I'm sorry. Thank you for reading! :3**


	13. Chapter 13 - Snow fight

**Hello, hello! A new, quite short chapter, as I promised. **

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Many hours later I found myself from a small frozen playground. The sun had hid behind thick grey clouds and I looked at them as I sat on a swing. Some other children were playing on the snow near a blue elephant shaped slide and their excited giggles and cries echoed across the whole street. They didn't seem to notice me and I didn't give them much of a thought either… other than that I wanted to shove couple snowballs into their faces and tell them to shut their mouths. Gladly I was still sane enough to stop myself. Right now I was just an unsolved mess of anger and bitterness and I didn't want to explode in front of completely innocent children. At least I could let them have their fun. As I looked at the clouds I thought of home, I thought of places I could have gone now that I had left Pitch… but like I had expected, I couldn't think of any. Now I wasn't even sure why I had escaped like that. I should have been used to monsters by now and when I thought about Pitch, I suddenly recognised the look he had given to me at the lair. It made me think of what I had done. Just hours ago I had thought that he had betrayed me, but now I wasn't so sure about it... maybe I had been the one who had betrayed him. He had helped me, and I had ran. He had told me his secret and I had rewarded his trust by leaving him. But still… even if my thoughts made me loathe myself I couldn't forgive him. It was almost funny.

Maybe I was a monster too… maybe that's why he had thought that we were so similar and that I could be his "new Guardian". But the fact that I had left him didn't probably even matter anymore… now he could find someone else to fill my place. Someone who wasn't as broken as I.

Loud laughter awakened me from my thoughts. The children were now much closer to me and they were in the middle of an intense snow fight. There was three of them. One was a boy with dark brown hair and I could see that he was missing teeth, other was a redheaded little girl face full of freckles and the last of them was a blond girl who seemed to be a bit older than the two others, maybe ten years old. I looked how they played, so carefree and happy. For a moment I longed to join them too and forget everything else in my mind, but then I shook my head and I turned away from them. I didn't want to ruin their game, nor did I really feel like playing with little kids right now. I rose up so I could move a safe distance from the snow fight when all of the sudden a snowball hit my back. I shrieked from surprise and turned quickly around to yell something I would have probably regretted to the kids, but they had ran to the other side of the playground. Either someone of them had a magnificent aim or one of the children had targeted me while hiding somewhere nearby. I saw the two girls giggling near of a sandbox that was full of snow, but the boy was missing. He must have been the one who threw the snowball. The place where the snowball had hit me felt cold, but for some reason I could feel a strange tingling sensation moving from it all around my back, and soon I could feel it everywhere in me. A small smirk curled the edges of my lips when I walked forward and looked for the boy who was responsible for throwing the snowball. I bent to the ground and made a snowball of my own. The shape of it was a bit more flat than round but I could still show the dark haired boy that I wasn't someone he should be crossing paths with. This might have been my first snow fight, but there was no way I was going to let him win. I moved wearily closer to the slide to see if he was on the other side when, again, I could feel something cold hitting the back of my head.

"Hey, stop it!", I shouted. I turned around and brushed the snow out of my hood and shoulders. There was no sign of the little boy and the only answer I got for my shout was three other snowballs hitting my head, arm and my backside. The last made color flush on my cheeks and I growled from humiliation and irritation.

"You're going to pay for that..." I murmured and looked for the boy furiously all around the playground.

Then I moved my gaze back to the girls, and I suddenly noticed where the boy was. The children had stopped the snow fight and they were building something out of snow. The boy stood on a big rock like a king of some sort and he seemed to give orders to the two others... until the oldest girl decided to give him a snow wash. I frowned.

_Impossible,_ I thought. _If all the children are there, then who was the one who-? _

Another snowball hit me, now from my side. It also confirmed my thoughts. There was a fourth child somewhere around here. I turned around as quickly as I could, but I didn't see the person who had thrown the snowball.

_Fine, hide then. I will figure out where you are sooner or later. _

After four annoyingly well aimed snowballs and a humiliating moment when I tripped to my own feet as I tried to get a glimpse of the person who threw them, I got an idea.

I bent down to the snow as if I would have just stopped to make my snowball larger, but I kept looking for any signs of movement under my lashes, I listened carefully my surroundings. Then, couple seconds later, I heard it: Two steps on the snow, very close to a nearby tree. I smirked.

A snowball flew towards me, but this time I dodged it, turned and threw quickly my own snowball to the direction the other one had come from.

I heard a loud thump when the person who had targeted me fell to the ground. For a moment I just stared at the figure on the ground, almost unbelieving that I had actually hit something with my terrible aim. Then a wild smile rose to my face and I let a triumphant laugh, a sound that I didn't even know I was capable of making, and I ran to see who I had hit. The boy was still on the ground when I came to him and his face was full of snow.

"Well… I probably deserved that...", he laughed with his gruff voice and wiped the snow off his face.

Then he moved his piercingly blue eyes to look into mine.

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**Thank you for reading! I try my best to give you a new chapter on the next Sunday. Love ya! ;)**


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